With the release of Cubase SX 2.0, Steinberg has responded to users'
requests for a number of features; the company has also revamped its
VST audio engine. New in this version are major enhancements such as
the Time Warp Tool, convenience upgrades such as the redesigned mixer,
and under-the-hood improvements such as full latency compensation. With
over 100 new features, this is an easier-to-use, better-performing, and
better-sounding Cubase. In this review I'll concentrate on the changes
since Cubase SX 1.0. For a full review of the major upgrade from Cubase
VST to Cubase SX, see the October 2003 issue of EM.

To take full advantage Cubase you'll need a fast computer with a
large, fast hard drive and lots of RAM. Steinberg recommends a dual
G4/1.25 GHz Mac or 1.4 GHz Pentium-class machine; the minimum
requirements, however, are somewhat lower. In practice, performance was
severely limited on a G4/800 MHz PowerBook. A 2.0 GHz dual G5 machine,
on the other hand, was easily able to handle a large number of audio
tracks and plug-ins.

Cubase also requires a good bit of screen real estate — a
1,152 × 864-pixel, dual-monitor setup is recommended. I felt
somewhat graphically constrained on a single 20-inch (1,680 ×
1,050-pixel) Apple Cinema display, mainly because minimum window sizes
for the mixers, editors, and Project window are quite large. I also had
frequent redraw problems, with buttons disappearing on the Track list,
the Inspector, and the Transport. Toggling some element of the display
would bring them back, but it became a bit of a nuisance. However, that
only occurs with Mac OS X 10.3.x (Panther), and Steinberg is aware of
the problem and is working to correct it.

UNDER THE HOOD

SX 2.0 sports a new audio engine with 32-bit floating-point
resolution and a multichannel audio path throughout. The new VST 2.3
audio engine includes a VST Connections window for managing input and
output buses. That allows you great flexibility in matching Cubase SX
to your audio hardware and to specific project requirements. Because
the bus setup is saved on the Project level rather than globally, you
can either create a single template with a maximal input and output
configuration or create templates for different Project types. For
example, you might have one setup for Projects that involve live
recording and another setup, without input buses, for Projects using
only audio files and virtual instruments.

The whole audio signal path is now multichannel. Individual audio
tracks can play separate or interleaved audio files containing as many
as six audio channels — accommodating 5.1-surround processing,
for example. Multichannel processing applies to send and insert effects
buses as well.

Effects plug-in handling is better in two ways. Automatic delay
compensation (see Fig. 1) adjusts for any delay introduced by
VST effects plug-ins — delaying all other audio by the same
amount. Delay is most often introduced by plug-ins that have a
look-ahead feature or that rely on a DSP card for their processing. The
Plug-in Information window shows the amount of delay and lets you
toggle delay compensation on and off for each plug-in. The new audio
engine also allows plug-in processing of incoming audio to be
recorded.

The other improvement in plug-in handling is the introduction of
effects return channels (see Fig. 2), which replace the
cumbersome and counterintuitive VST Effects window. Effects buses are
now created like any other Project track and are automatically
allocated a mixer channel strip for inserting plug-ins, applying EQ,
and managing return level, pan position, and so on. All plug-in
parameters can be automated in the Project window just like audio and
MIDI tracks.

The new audio engine supports freezing of individual VST-instrument
plug-in tracks. The VST Instruments window now has a freeze button for
each plug-in. Clicking on it creates a temporary audio file with the
instrument's output and all subsequent processing. As long as freezing
is active, the temporary file is played instead of the instrument,
which generally saves a significant amount of processing. Freezing can
be turned off when changes need to be made to instrument parameters or
MIDI data. Level and pan can be adjusted while freezing is active. If
you face CPU limitations, the freeze function can be a lifesaver.

BELLS AND WHISTLES

Many of the new features and enhancements in Cubase SX are designed
to streamline the workflow, and they do make life easier. You can now
edit multiple parts in both the MIDI and audio editors. In the MIDI
editors, you can choose to have one or all open parts be active. When
only one part is active, lasso-selecting is restricted to events in
that part, making it easy to edit data in a single part while viewing
its relationship to events in other parts.

A new Ruler track class has been added that allows you to place
rulers at any position within the track list. Each ruler can have its
own display format (Bars:Beats, Seconds, Samples, and so on), so you
can easily place markers or locate video snapshots on a timeline while
arranging MIDI parts and events by bars and beats.

A number of windows have been improved. The Transport and the
Project-window toolbars can now be customized by toggling view options
in a context menu that opens when you right click in an empty area of
the display. You can also customize the display, arrangement, and
grouping of buttons for each track type. You can now have three mixer
views (as opposed to two in previous versions), each with its own
configuration. More is better here because considerable clicking is
involved in setting it up the highly flexible mixer display to show
exactly what you want the way you want to see it, and it's handy to
then be able to save that work as one of the mixer views.

WRINKLING TIME

The new Time Warp Tool (see Fig. 3) allows you to quickly
adapt the Tempo track to specific audio or MIDI events as well as video
hitpoints. In the various editors as well as the Project window, you
simply drag lines of the bar:beat grid to the desired audio, video, or
MIDI events. Tempo events are automatically added as needed to make the
bar:beat grid positions match the time of the selected events. If you
are warping to audio or picture and you have MIDI on adjacent tracks,
the MIDI timing changes to match. If you are warping to MIDI events,
their timing won't change, but their bar:beat alignment will. That is a
better solution for scoring rubato playing than quantizing, which
actually removes the time variations.

The Warp Tool would be even more useful if there were a convenient
way to copy and move tempo changes. If you Warp to an audio loop, for
example, you would naturally like to be able to copy or move the tempo
changes with the loop. The only way to do that is to select the related
tempo events in the Tempo Track window and drag them to the new
location — a process that becomes tedious with repetition.

A new Stacked Cycle Record mode greatly facilitates recording
multiple takes. When enabled, each cycle of audio or MIDI being
recorded is placed on its own lane on the record track. You can then
edit the lanes individually as needed and invoke the Remove Overlaps
option to collapse all lanes to a single take.

In the scoring department, you can now assign MIDI meaning to
dynamics symbols, resulting in more accurate MIDI playback of scored
parts. Other MIDI enhancements include drag-and-drop importing of
Standard MIDI Files, chord recognition in the MIDI editors (select a
chord and the appropriate chord symbol will appear in the Info
display), and automatic scale correction during transposition.

Those are just a few of the many new features in Cubase SX 2.0.
Taken together, they significantly improve the work flow. Beyond that,
the new audio engine results in a noticeable improvement in
performance. If you're a Cubase user, you need it.

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